Written by Scott Cleland: "With so many fanboys spinning Silicon Valley history, it's sometimes easy to forget about the real chain of events that led to the ongoing Apple-Google thermonuclear war, how the romance turned to hate. This timeline presents an interesting case about why, despite patents and prior art, Steve Jobs had plenty of personal reasons to despise Schmidt, Page, and Brin." Cleland has a very, very good point; quite coherent and well-reasoned... That is, if you haven't got a single shred of historical sense and completely and utterly ignore the 30-odd years of mobile computing development that preceded our current crop of smartphones. It's hard not to be reminded of how certain groups of people dismiss millions of years of fossil records because this record inconveniences their argument. In any case, a comment on the article answered the question properly: "Jobs was a businessman. He was angry he was losing money. Simple."

Thom, chill man. You're way to anti-Apple. Everything has some degree of prior art, but the move from a PDA (stylus based UI) to a modern smart-phone (finger based UI) was started with the iPhone.

Sure, you can argue that there were tablets before the iPad, but even considering the insane amounts of PR and money Microsoft pushed into the concept, it still took an iPad to make them common. Apple really worked to make their devices usable by average humans, regardless if it's the iPod, iPhone or iPad and everyone, even if there were similar products before, they were mostly market failures.

Everyone argues that for each individual element there was prior art, and they are right, but the balance of elements is the unique part. Think of it this way: before the Prius, there were no hybrids, right? Well, as it turns out, most diesel train engines from the 60's onwards are hybrids. In the 30's Porsche designed a hybrid car, etc.

I still consider the iPhone to be the reinvention of the modern telephone, just like Prius is the reinvention of the car (although it's a sucky car by itself).

Given the argument that the right balance is the one making the difference, you can imagine that Apple spent hundreds of thousands of man hours for the first iPhone. The web is full of stories of Jobs sending everyone back to the drawing board countless times. Jobs was correctly infuriated by Google when, after years of trial-and-error at the "Apple Labs", Google comes with something so similar to the iPhone. This is especially infuriating since Schmidt was on the Apple board and had pre-release access to the iPhone information.

Stop buying into the obvious argument as it's BS. Everything was obvious AFTER someone came up with it. BEFORE being obvious, it was next to impossible. The real art in coming up with a good product is to come up with exactly what everyone already needs and the market doesn't cover. What everyone needs is always obvious, but still requires development and research. And if you believe in patents (I personally don't, especially not in their current format), getting payed for your R&D that produces obviousness is a must. Since the rules of the game are FOR patents instead of AGAINST, why shouldn't Apple get money out of it?

Thom, chill man. You're way to anti-Apple. Everything has some degree of prior art, but the move from a PDA (stylus based UI) to a modern smart-phone (finger based UI) was started with the iPhone.

Actually surface was first displayed by MS an created the huge multitouch hype. Also HTC was the first to use touch gestures (no multitouch yet). Apple was just the first to use multitouch on mobile devices. Also when released iphone was not a smartphone in my opinion since apple didn't allow 3rd party apps.

Everyone argues that for each individual element there was prior art, and they are right, but the balance of elements is the unique part.

Yep... but for me it is still just an evolution of htc touchflo 3d and also they do not have a patent on the balance of the design. Get your hands on a HTC Touch Pro and you will find it similar to HTC One X.

I still consider the iPhone to be the reinvention of the modern telephone, just like Prius is the reinvention of the car (although it's a sucky car by itself).

You do... I don't, just first multitouch commercial mobile device. And an evolution, not a revolution.

Given the argument that the right balance is the one making the difference, you can imagine that Apple spent hundreds of thousands of man hours for the first iPhone. The web is full of stories of Jobs sending everyone back to the drawing board countless times.

That was jobs style on anything he managed...still it is not an revolution... just a freak on micromanagement when it comes to design. Android didn't copy that much iOS as you belive. IPhone was not much more revolutionary than Nokia N80 or HTC.

Stop buying into the obvious argument as it's BS. Everything was obvious AFTER someone came up with it. BEFORE being obvious, it was next to impossible. The real art in coming up with a good product is to come up with exactly what everyone already needs and the market doesn't cover.

Yes... but iPhone didn't come up with exactly what everyone already needs... app store was late and still is to restrictive for me... file management is BS for me... etc... irrelevant... what it is relevant is that the price for being the first is the sales and brand recognition that you get.
Also the price for adaptability is not loosing too much when someone else comes first. And android was designed to be adaptable and is evolving faster and nicer than iOS.